MSNBC "Hardball with Chris Matthews" -Transcript
Interview
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MATTHEWS: Congresswoman DeGette, is there a little carrier pigeon that goes around from Mark Levin to Rush Limbaugh to Michelle Bachmann to Joe Barton? Who delivers these little pearls like "slush fund," you know, and "shakedown"? Where do these words come from?
REP. DIANA DEGETTE (D-CO), ENERGY & COMMERCE COMMITTEE: They don"t--they don"t tell me where they got the words. But I tell you what. I was sitting right there when Joe Barton said that this morning, and later this afternoon when he came back and tried to retract what he said. And everybody was shocked that he said that.
Here"s why. Number one, BP is responsible for the largest environmental history (SIC) in our nation"s--in our nation. And--and they--it was negligence on every level. They went to the White House voluntarily yesterday. They agreed with the president that they would set up this fund to compensate the victims in this environmental disaster on the gulf. And now Congressman Barton comes in and apologizes to them? And they all use this word "slush fund"? Are they--it"s real--it just really shows a complete lack of understanding of what happened here, or frankly, the suffering that the people on the gulf are going through right now.
MATTHEWS: Yes, I wouldn"t use the word "slush" in this environment...
DEGETTE: No.
MATTHEWS: ... with all that stuff coming up on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico. I don"t think that"s a well advised word.
DEGETTE: No.
MATTHEWS: Let"s take a look, Congresswoman--I want your reaction to this. Let"s hear what the CEO--if he had anything to say today. It"s not clear he did.
DEGETTE: No, he didn"t.
MATTHEWS: Here"s Republican congressman Tom Price putting out this statement--well, let"s go to Tony Hayward. He"s the guy we"ve been watching for days now, the British guy with the very nice accent. Here he is. Let"s listen and see if he answers any questions. The chairman of--the CEO of BP.
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TONY HAYWARD, BP CEO: I was not a part of that decision-making process.
I was not involved in that decision.
I can"t possibly know the basis on which that decision was taken.
I"m afraid I can"t recall that.
And I don"t recall that, either, I"m afraid.
Again, I was not involved in the decision making. It means I can"t answer your question in that form.
I can"t recall that number, I"m afraid.
I can"t answer that question because I wasn"t there.
I"m afraid I can"t recall.
I"m afraid I can"t recall that, either.
That was a decision I was not party to.
I don"t know.
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MATTHEWS: I"m thinking of Henry Higgins in "My Fair Lady"--they don"t care what they say as long as they say it properly. I mean, I don"t know what he said there properly, anything?
DEGETTE: Chris, what"s really shocking is last week, the chairman sent him a very detailed memo about what we all intended to ask Mr. Hayward about. And yet he showed up today--all he said is he felt bad, but then he disclaimed any knowledge for anything that happened. He said he brought a technical expert. But when I asked him to bring his technical expert up to the table and help answer questions, he declined to do that. So it was really disappointing testimony, and it"s still going on. I"m getting ready to go back myself and question him some more. At least we"ll have this on the record.
And I will also say this committee, the Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee, is not going to just stop today. We"re going to keep bringing the BP employees and their subcontractors in until we get answers to how this terrible tragedy occurred and how we can prevent it in the future, and how we"re going to compensate the victims quickly.
MATTHEWS: Well, you know, when a plane crashes or we have some other tragedy, we have a little black box we try to find in the water or somewhere, and we go through it and we try to figure out, looking at all the technology, and learn what happened. Do you believe we"re going to find out the management decisions that led to this catastrophe? Will we find them out?
DEGETTE: Chris, we already have a lot of the information in internal BP documents and Halliburton documents and Schlumberger and all of the other people working on this rig. We already have a lot of the evidence. And what it shows is that every step of the way--five different ways that they could have helped prevent this explosion--they took shortcuts. They didn"t do what the industry best practices were, and they tried to save money.
In the cementing, for example, they sent away the subcontractors who were going to do a key test in order to save about $116,000. So we do have a lot of that information now.
MATTHEWS: Yes.
DEGETTE: And we"re just going to keep probing until we get all of it.
MATTHEWS: Penny wise and pound foolish.
DEGETTE: Oh!
MATTHEWS: To use a British expression.
DEGETTE: In an unconceivable (SIC) way.
MATTHEWS: Thank you very much.
DEGETTE: Thank you, Chris.
MATTHEWS: OK, thank you very much, Congresswoman Diana DeGette of Colorado.
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